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Why Isaac Clarke and Commander Shepard are in MySims Sky Heroes

If you saw that awfully cute trailer for EA's upcoming MySims Sky Heroes title, you probably wondered the same thing everyone else did: What's a decidedly M-rated character doing in an E-rated setting? Not only does Dead Space's Isaac Clarke make a cameo in the game as a playable chibi pilot, but Mass Effect's Commander Shepard is there as well. Joystiq cornered MySims assistant producer Matthew Salazar at a preview event today to find out.

"This is not just a game for kids," he said. "It's the sort of game that the older generation will play with the younger generation." And the references don't stop with EA characters. "There are a lot of Top Gun references in here," he confided, "and no 10-year-olds are going to get all of those." The characters may be M-rated, but Salazar doesn't expect the kids to see them that way. When younger players see the Isaac character, "there's just a cool spaceman in a suit."

And the development team had a selfish reason to include some famous EA characters as well -- "we did it because we think it's cool," said Salazar. All of video gaming's big mascots in the past, like Mario and Sonic, have been cuddly and family friendly, so it's funny to think of grimy M-rated characters as cute brand representations, but in this game, that's what they are.